Experimental investigations on heated protrusions on a PCB subjected to natural convection or forced convection cooling

This paper reports the results of experimental investigations on cooling of a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) mounted with electronic components in various configurations like single component in forced convection, single component in natural convection, multiple components in forced convection and multiple components in natural convection. Design correlations have been developed for all the four cases. It is found that Nusselt number is a strong function of aspect ratio, vertical pitch and emissivity of electronic components. A design procedure is also proposed and it is demonstrated with the help of an example.